03: Signal

I started working at Cognitive Athletics in the fall. Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot about signals.

In that context, signals are something you train for. You see the flash, you react. The goal is to bypass thought. Remove the delay. Be present, immediate, automatic.

But I started wondering - what even is a signal?

Take away the words. The labels. The meanings we wrap around things to feel safe.
What’s left?

Just light. Sensation. Chaos.

And maybe some patterns inside that chaos if you’re paying attention.

Signals shape our lives.
How we move, how we protect ourselves, how we show up.
But that’s also where we get stuck.

Because signals change.
And a lot of us don’t.

We build reactions around old patterns.
Condition responses to things that no longer exist.
We think we’re responding to now, but really we’re just rehearsing the past.

That’s where it gets slippery.

There’s also this other kind of signal.
The one that doesn’t flash or beep or make itself obvious.
The one that lives in your chest. Your gut.
The one you feel before you can name.

Intuition.

It’s not loud.
And it doesn’t explain itself.
But it knows something.
And the mistake we make is rushing to understand it too fast.
To wrap it in words so we don’t have to sit with the discomfort of not knowing.

But maybe that’s the point.

Maybe the real signal isn’t meant to be translated right away.
Maybe it just wants to be felt.

We were taught to label. To recognize. To sort.
And yeah sometimes that’s helpful.
Like when to cross the street. Or what's poisonous in the wild.

But emotionally?
We end up walking through fields of our own landmines.
Dodging ghosts.
Fighting shadows.

To be close to the signal is to stay with it.
Not force it to mean something.
Not freeze it in place.
But to let it move. Let it shift. Let it undo you a little.

To live with change and not panic.
To not need the ending before the beginning even lands.

That might be the most honest thing you can do.
Not hold on tighter.
But respond to what’s actually here.

And be ok with whatever that is.